


give me breath and let me cough

by lupcretia will rise (waved)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Eating Disorders, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insecurity, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexy Times Gone Wrong, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 12:58:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11898231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waved/pseuds/lupcretia%20will%20rise
Summary: It's a practiced routine now. Lup doesn't know the concept of "personal space" (the quotations most certainly added) and Lucretia's heart had always been weak to her. On a sleepless night in the Bureau of Benevolence café, Lup had found Lucretia wearily nursing a steaming cup of tea and immediately suggested they should sleep together.Lucretia still wasn't entirely sure how Lup's thought process worked.





	give me breath and let me cough

**Author's Note:**

> lucy projects onto lucretia: the fic  
> barely proofread and not beta'd, please lmk if theres any mistakes!

Lucretia methodically unclips the the silver barrettes from her hair, running her hands through the crimped waves it leaves behind. The bobby pins come tumbling out, small elastics popping with the tumble of her hair.

It's been two months since the near-end of the world, and with the threat of color-laced destruction no longer looming, she's finally letting her hair down. Literally and figuratively.

Lucretia hums to herself, the lovely song from year forty-seven that's stuck with her through all these years. Lup's waiting for her. She can just imagine her, giving a loud, exasperated groan when Lucretia finally leaves the bathroom to their shared bed, all to hide the smile that still fights itself into the corners of her mouth. Lup isn't the most considerate nor kind bedfellow that Lucretia's ever had, but Lup's the one she's chosen to stand — or lie — with, and the girl's certainly the one Lucretia loves the most.

When she finally _leaves_ the bathroom (after meticulous minutes analyzing every wrinkle on her face), Lup's waiting, just like she predicted. She's perched on the edge of the bed frame, swimming in Magnus' muscle tee that has perfectly hemmed sleeves, despite what the lettering says. Lup's ears twitch when she hears Lucretia open the door, jangling the copious jewelry she was in the middle of taking out.

"You're slow, Luce," she says with a huff, taking the twin suns from her ears and setting them on the duvet.

"Comes with old age," Lucretia jokes, spreading her hands. She doesn't look all that bad, considering. She's a good-looking fifty, what with her skin not having the time to age _too_ terribly while in Wonderland; she's got crows feet and laugh lines for miles, but she can find it in herself to embrace those.

Lup snorts, flips her girlfriend the bird, and wrangles the last few studs and hoops out, making a puddle of a clinking catastrophe. Lucretia stoops, picks them up, and sets them gently on the nightstand. It's a practiced routine now. Lup doesn't know the concept of "personal space" (the quotations most certainly added) and Lucretia's heart had always been weak to her. On a sleepless night in the Bureau of Benevolence café, Lup had found Lucretia wearily nursing a steaming cup of tea and immediately suggested they should sleep together. 

Lucretia still wasn't entirely sure how Lup's thought process worked.

Still, they'd been committed even while Lup was aeons away, still had intimate, slow moments and more panicked, frenzied ones, all eternally there. So Lucretia knew what Lup meant, had hardly _hesitated_ when Lup reached for her curled hand.

Lup, now, stands from the bed, her legs going pigeon-toed, and, though moving jerkily, presses a kiss to Lucretia's forehead.

"I can hear you thinkin', moonbeam," she says, not unkindly, tugging on Luctetia's hand — _just like the first time_ — in a suggestion. Lucretia follows it, taking Lup's lead and tumbling into bed with her, amidst brief kisses and wandering hands.

Lup's hands are the ones that are wandering, to be correct, sneaking under the soft blue B.o.B. shirt, bought in bulk from Fantasy Vistaprint and sold through Fantasy Costco. Lucretia keeps one of her hands laced with Lup's, the other splayed over their purple sheets. She wants to touch her back — but something holds her, always does. There's still the residual guilt of what _happened,_ every mistake Lucretia has made like a blinking light in the back of her mind.

Lup pulls up Lucretia's shirt, tucking herself between her thighs and grabbing for her breasts. She's seemed to develop an interesting fondness of them, despite her previous disinterest.

"I _love_ your tits, Lucy," Lup says rather crudely, and further cementing Lucretia's train of thought. Her breasts aren't even really special, and they're smaller and flatter than they used to be; after Wonderland, Lucretia had stopped eating in disgust of her body and lost most of her younger chubby weight.

 _(It was unfair, was all. She aged and they didn't get the chance to. It disturbed her, it_ frightened _her, and it made her vomit with the guilt that peaked and overflowed inside her.)_

Lucretia puts her free hand over Lup's, leaning up on her elbows to kiss her. Lup responds eagerly (she always does), licking into her mouth and making little sighs and hums. She's a still little spastic in her body, having only lived in it for barely three weeks; she rushes into action with unparalleled and unintentional energy and has trouble walking sometimes. Lup is sensitive to touch (which makes for _very_ intriguing sex) and has a new appreciation for texture, food, and _people._ All the creature comforts she stayed without for nearly twelve years are all at her fingers, and she's thoroughly appreciating them.

Specifically Lucretia.

Lup takes her sweet time kissing her, breathing steadily through her nose with tongues intertwined, far longer than she would indulge back on the Starblaster. 

_(The first day she came back, after a tearful and happy yelling match with Taako, she took Lucretia to her bedroom and — though she hated to call it this — made love to her for hours, wringing four orgasms from Lucretia and two from herself. They'd fallen together, then, crying and laughing and holding each other tighter than ever before.)_

"Lucyyyyy," Lup sings when she pulls back, licking her lips devilishly. She nuzzles against Lucretia's cheek, trailing messy kisses down her jaw and neck, past the scoop of her shirt and tracing her tongue over Lucretia's breasts. She can't help but laugh at the dire concentration on Lup's face, like Lucretia's tits are of the utmost importance.

When Lup's tongue turns into teeth, however, her breath jumps, turns into a shaky sigh instead of a chuckle. Lup picks up her humming as she drags her canines down Lucretia's sternum, biting at the still-there protrusion of her ribs.

"Oh," Lucretia says. Her breathing picks up, but it isn't from exhilaration. Her chest tightens.

_(Being without Lup and the rest of her family was the worst possible consequence she could have given herself. Barry and Lup, she had no control over — she didn't let herself wonder where they were (she broke this personal promise daily). For the others, she pushed them as far as possible from her, to keep her from crawling back to them, to the love they so graciously shared with her. She couldn't. She couldn't do that to herself, nor them. She was already falling apart, more than just a century's difference from the woman she had once been back on her home planet.)_

"Lup—" Lucretia gasps when her girlfriend keeps biting her, struggling to move, to sit up so she can _breathe,_ but Lup doesn't see her face, doesn't feel her panic under her fingernails like Lucretia does. She just puts her long-nailed hand over Lucretia's stomach, pushing her back down with a lighthearted giggle under her tongue.

 _(Lucretia had done awful things. It was who she was, now — a shell, an empty, lonely mess. With everyone situated and happy, doing amazing, wonderful things_ without _her, with a base in the making, with her life and heart in the Miller's hands, she had taken to scouring the ends of the planet for Lup. She searched endlessly until she collapsed, wracked with guilt and pain and sorrow. She was still young, then. A friend — a loving, steadfast friend, a man she_ abandoned _so cruelly — had found her, exhausted and nearly dying in the mouth of Wave Echo Cave. The flyer came as debris. They went together, hand in hand, and she left alone.)_

"Get off, get _off,"_ Lucretia hisses, her heart hammering in her throat, pulling her shirt back over herself before covering her face with her hands. She is falling apart — she can feel the slackening of her skin, the weakness of her joints, melting into what she should have been, what she should have became after living for 130 years. Nothing but remains.

Lup jerks back, scurrying to the edge of the bed.

"Luce?" she says, her voice uncharacteristically small.

 _(Lucretia didn't deserve to show age. She deserved to stay in her young skin, never changing, remaining the same and never dying, cycle through cycle through cycle of monotonous hell. All she could do was restrict herself. She hated herself, so deeply and intensely, a far stronger hate than anything else she had felt. As soon as she could feel her hipbones, the edge of her ribs, did she stop herself, but it wasnt_ enough. _Her pain was not yet equal to theirs. She carved dark red lines into herself; for Taako, the show in Glamour Springs she couldn't save; for Magnus, the town that disintegrated and the carefully constructed life she created, destroyed; for Merle, and the family she couldn't convince him to stay with; for Lup; for Barry; for Davenport.)_

Lucretia's body is shaking, trying to curl inside herself, trying to _stop crying._ It's undue pain. She shouldn't be weeping — _she_ caused the horror, _she_ ruined her friends' lives. Lucretia was her own enemy, still is.

"Lucy," Lup says, and she sounds _scared._ "Lucy, please tell me you're okay, I'm sorry you didn't like what I was doin'—"

 _"Fuck,"_ is all Lucretia can bring herself to choke out at first, but then the words tumble. "Fuck. Lup. I don't — I don't _deserve_ this."

"Deserve what?" Lup asks, voice going harsh, though she doesn't mean it to. She's trying to get closer, but every instinct inside her is warning her: _get away, get away._ Taako has his night terrors, certainly, but he is _asleep,_ and he is her _brother._ This is the woman she loves, and though she isn't rational, she is lucid, and Lup is beyond terrified. 

"You. Gods, _you,_ all of you, I — I'm the reason you went without a body for so _long,_ Lup—" She hiccups and makes a low keen, her voice beyond hysterical and overwhelmed. "I couldn't look, _didn't bother_ to look fucking _hard_ enough — I ruined your _lives._ I destroyed your fucking lives."

Lucretia moans pathetically, face wet and mouth open, stuttering gasps locked in her chest. She still somehow finds it in herself to lift her head and stare at Lup with pleading, bloodshot eyes.

"Lucretia—"

_"You shouldn't ever forgive me."_

Lup is overtaken by something. Her mouth twists and her nails rip through the duvet.

 _"Fuck_ you," Lup snaps. "I fucking forgave you, Lucy, and I'm _sticking_ with that. You don't know what's best for me, and you don't have a fuckin' _clue_ what I've been through. My body was _my_ fuck-up, don't take over _my_ mistakes to fuel _your_ self-hatred."

Lup breaks into angry tears, but Lucretia can tell she had been desperately trying to hold them in, keep her negative feelings far and hidden, like she always tries to do.

Lucretia, still shuddering, scrubs her face, wipes the tears away. They continue to fall; it feels like they won't ever stop. When she senses Lup next to her, she hardly reacts.

The elf's ears are pointed down, as are her lips, and Lucretia wants it to _stop._ She wants, _intensely,_ to have never hurt her family, never joined the crew, never _lived._ The tears drip off her chin, staining her shirt. They don't stop. Lucretia doesn't stop.

"I'm sorry," she croaks, wincing at the roughness of her throat.

"I keep telling you to quit that shit," Lup says, but it's soft and fond, if slightly wavering. Lucretia finds it in herself to laugh. "Listen. Seriously, baby, _listen."_ Lup slings her arm around Lucretia and buries her face in her hair; she wants to pull away, wants to deny the comfort she shouldn't need, but she is undone. Lup presses her lips against Lucretia's temple, and it feels okay for a few moments.

"We're fucked up," Lucretia says, and Lup cackles.

"That we are, ladybug," she agrees. "That we are. But seriously — Lucy. I love you. You're the fuckin' fake moon base to my ocean tide." She doesn't force Lucretia to look at her, but she feels it is for both of their sakes. "You lift me up, you got my body back, you help me _walk_ even though—" and she laughs at this, morose. "—even though it should be the other way 'round.

"But you need to — to quit this. The guilt. I know how fuckin' hard it is, baby, we left all those _people_ — shit, this isn't a good topic. Christ." She heaves a sigh, starts over. "We love you. The entire fucking squad. You fucked up, but we _love_ you."

"You'll never be able to convince me of that," Lucretia says, hanging her head. After a century of building, Lucretia tore down her haven in minutes. A home of its magnitude, its _magnificence,_ would take longer than the years Lucretia had left to rebuild. "I want to believe it's true — I _do,_ Lup, I just—"

She shakes her head.

"I ruined something irreparable."

Lup wipes her fresh tears away and the gentle gesture counteracts some of the writhing guilt in her gut.

"Will you believe you've got my love back, at least?" she asks, reaching for Lucretia's hand.

Lucretia takes it; her hand, her love, her life.

"Of course. Always."

Lup's smile, marred by teardrops, is more radiant than their two suns; more beautiful than anything Lucretia hopes to ever see. She has a long way to go, but she will get there.

She will get there.

**Author's Note:**

> if you comment/kudos, new stars will burst to life and create a constellation, just for you.


End file.
